The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

 

I love this novel, so much so that I am going to do my own annotation of it after the New Year and write a long review on Amazon and Goodreads. It is part detective story, part love story, with a tragic backstory that really comes forward at the end. I love these kinds of structures. Also Walter Hartright is not the typical everyman at all and based partly on Collins' own father. He has become one of my favorite characters in English literature. The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins is really a beautiful novel with so many fine moments of great writing. These Victorian novels that were serialized have highly influenced my work. The author's peers were critical of it though it was highly successful with the public. Think Game of Thrones. I believe they were critical because Collins attempted to give these women, creatures of their times, agency and purpose, and he also damned the idea of families putting women in mental institutions to be controlled. Women were property in Collins' time. He hated that. If you have never read this book, give it a try. Highly recommended.